Ecclesial Longings

What is my response as a member of the Body of Christ to gun violence? Some fellow Christians know definitively what we should do, others know with equal assertion what isn’t the solution. Are either informed, truly by the mind of Christ the crucified one, God Father Son and Holy Spirit. Is my response to the question the state and its claimed monopoly on violence, so informed? The more I sit with the horror of all the violence, what we consider legitimate (Police and military, the power of death wielded by the State) and what we consider illegitimate (the power of death wielded by non-state actors, those we call terrorists), I waver. How do we end suffering? Perhaps it is the best to let the state maintain its monopoly, and that will keep others safe, or at least limit suffering and death. Can the State in wielding the power of death keep death at bay? Maybe – probably often, but what does that mean? Am I, then, entrusting myself to the power of death for my own and others safety?

It is difficult to think well about such things as a White Christian (of whatever political or ideological stripe), in part I think because of the predominance of lynching, but also because we have implicitly or explicitly for the most part accepted certain types of violence as necessary for the maintenance of the secular public order that we also baptize. Progressive White Christians want to impose a certain logic of violence upon us that continues to reserve the power of death to the state (as long as there isn’t an explicit death penalty) and demand the citizenry maintain a veneer of non-violence, partially enforced by restricting certain means of violence. The Christian right wants to protect the constitution and a certain amendment of that constitution, and the right for Christians citizens to wield the power of death when necessary against aggressors and possibly against the state if it over reaches its bounds. Both still bind up the Christian stance with violence, one restricts legitimate violence entirely to the State, the other wishes to extend the realm of legitimate violence to law-abiding citizens.

In this discussion the Bible is often used to shore up one’s opinion. Of course the Bible is full of violence, and even God makes use of violence and the power of death, to coerce and carry out certain ends (e.g. the Exodus from Egypt). My theological account will look to scriptures and God’s self-revelation but my beginning point won’t be the Bible and my position isn’t Biblical. That way too lies a dead-end.

How then do we address our violence theologically and as a member of the Body of Christ? Here I’m pulling punches, as I’ve, in that phrase, already countered a claim that the state may have upon my person as it’s citizen. I’m pointing us also to a liturgical rite.

This reflection begins at Baptism, and thus a renunciation as well as an affirmation. A liturgical act and not the Bible is my beginning point. Of course Scripture and what God says about the act of baptism is what gives that act meaning. Baptism takes us from one realm to another from one allegiance to another. To be one with Christ is to renounce sin death and the devil. Yet much of Christian history seems to contradict this as Christendom attempted to make room for death in the members of Christ that served the state (or were the state, as emperor or king). We give little attention to a particular detail of the biography of the first Christian Emperor, Saint only became a member of the body of Christ until just before his death. He remained a catechumen his whole life, only receiving baptism upon his death bed. This was a frowned upon but common practice at the time. I’ve no proof of this, but I’ve wondered if that wasn’t a most honest move by Saint Constantine: As a baptized Christians he would have compromised the vows of his baptism had he wielded the power of death as the state. These days we are well versed in the compromises of a legalized and imperial Christianity and how Christians have sought to find a meeting between the coercive power of the state and the Church, a name for that compromise is Christendom.

I mention all the above to point out that we shouldn’t be too confident of our conclusions. Yet, at the same time there are hints that Baptism shows us that what we consider necessary for the maintenance of the state and of the common good isn’t readily compatible with being a member of Christ’s body the Church.

Where we begin makes all the difference. If we begin with the Bible, we can look to the formation of the people of Israel as they were delivered from bondage and Egypt and established in the land of Israel, and Biblically assume that a certain violence is legitimate and necessary. But we won’t necessarily answer where the line of legitimate violence is drawn in a democracy like ours. I’m arguing though that seeking Biblical sanction of legitimate violence isn’t seeking the mind of Christ, nor is it seeking the stance of one who is a member of Christ’s Body, through baptism. My actions and thinking in relation to the state and our democracy isn’t about my being a U.S. Citizen but only in my being a Baptized member of the body of Christ. This is a radical claim. However, I believe like the early Christians that the best citizen of the world and its states is one whose identity isn’t bound up with that state or nation but is entirely given over to Christ and the Holy Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit.

As one whose identity is Christ, whose body is claimed by the cross and the name Father Son and Holy spirit, I’m no longer beholden to the state and to the power of death and its logic. While God, it is reported in the Scriptures, made use of the power of death and the logic of the state’s monopoly of that power, God’s ultimate revelation shows God’s own renunciation of that power. God, Father Son and Holy Spirit in the incarnation of the Son in Jesus of Nazareth suffers the legitimate violence of the State, instead of coming to wield that power. This is the way of Christ and of the Church.

Thus, my response to our current debate over guns and gun violence is to say that as a member of Christ’s body one is no longer given over to the power of death but freed from the power of death. Thus, neither defense of gun ownership nor shoring up the states monopoly of violence is the appropriate response or stance of the Church. In some sense the Cross of Christ shows there’s no such thing as “legitimate” violence or wielding of the power of death. Though, we may have to concede that to limit the destructive evil of those given over to the power of death, some may need to wield violence and the power of death, but in doing so one is in sin and in violation of one’s baptism ( this is my interpretation and application of Bonhoeffer’s reflection on the plot to assassinate Hitler; doing so was to participate in sin, but one took responsibility for that sin, as it would end a greater evil. Though the just end cant’t redeem the sinful act of taking a life).

As such as a citizen of Christ I’d urge, a simultaneous limiting of that state’s violence first in disarming the police while also removing military style weaponry from the possession of ordinary citizens. Also, This would require a more Christ like culture of policing, one where the safety of the police officer isn’t paramount. Rather we would come to see policing as deeply self-sacrificial, even to the point of willingness to suffer death for the other and for peace on our streets. This would be a radically different view of policing something that could hardly be viewed as simply a dangerous job. It would need to be a true calling where one would enter it knowing one may not retire alive. We wouldn’t train officers to self-protect, but to lay down their lives. If the state was willing to limit its wielding of violence and the power of death, then so should its citizenry. I would work with my fellow Christians progressive and conservative towards such a limit of the power of death in our world.

At Personal musings I wrote a sober (perhaps depressing) account of our situation as citizens of the U.S.A, as a country and nation that is racist, has committed genocide and war crimes as it has attempted to bring its ideal of democracy and freedom across a contentment and as a beacon of democracy to the world. I contended there, that any good such a nation produces is always already mixed with its evil. The Nation State and its citizenry are stuck in this impossible bind even as that people might seek to disentangle and only live into its good ideal, but the ideal is suspect.

For the U.S. this has a theological and ecclesiological dimension. I will suggest here (and this post isn’t the place to flesh this out fully, rather this is a sketch that maybe some would like to help flesh out), that part of what we are seeing still working itself out in our streets, in our policing and criminal justice system and our politics, is a working out of an heretical misapplication of the qualities and the purpose of the Body of Christ to a nation state.

Theologically what I described, in the other post, could be summed up by the theological concept of original sin. Human failure and evil have powerful and continuing effect upon generation after generation of the original act. Human good of its own can’t cancel out or redeem human evil and failure. At best, from the perspective of mere human action, what we can hope for is a mixture that might be accented upon human goodness. But any human goodness is always already tainted by human failure and human evil. The solution is in two parts: one is repentance, a change of heart and mind and which is opening up to the second part of the solution is that which God ultimately did in Jesus of Nazareth, as the crucified one.

However, for white Christians in the United States this theological account runs aground as a way forward. The reason for this is ecclesiology, or an ecclesiological heresy. This too is twofold: There is the identification of the United States, America, with images and role of the Church, the People of God, Israel, the Body of Christ. The U.S. as America is a “City set upon a hill” to be a light to the nations. At the same time Whites, those of European descent, think of themselves as Whites as the People of God entrusted to bring the truth, civilization and salvation to people of color. These two misappropriations of ecclesial distinctive to a nation and a race create the divisions and racial segregation we continue to see in American Christian Religion.

Part of the mythology of the United States is the heretical appropriation of the purposes and reality of the Body of Christ to a particular Race , Whites, and a particular Nation State, the U.S.A, under the name “America”. The mythological greatness of the United States and its role in the world is founded upon this appropriation of the role of the Church the Body of Christ by this Nation State.

While one dimension of this was something Europeans had already begun as Race and Whiteness were invented. However, White American Christians took it further and identified it with the state formed out of the rebellion from the British Empire, “America”.

One can argue that White Christians then bear a particular burden for what we see today in our streets and justice system.

The hopeful response to all of this, the bad theology, the misapplication of some special role for the United States as America in bringing democracy and enlightenment to the world, is the repentance of White American Christians, which should include the renunciation of the mythology of “America”

This repentance and renunciation of this heresy of American exceptionalism, of bringing the light of freedom and democracy to the world, a light to the nations, can lead to further repentance both in regards to slavery but also in regards to the genocide of Native Americans. White Christians need to stop appealing to the American mythology, recant any claim to exceptionalism for the United States, and seek to first be identified not as Christians but as members of the Church the Body of Christ. Such a repentance and renunciation and subsequent affirmation would be one source hope in our time.

This reflection is a riff on Ephesians 1:1-14, and is the first post in a series of blog posts whose introduction can be found here

Ephesians shows us what has been revealed about God’s will. Paul is an apostle within this will of God. God’s will is that we are in Jesus Christ, joined with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The nature of these relationships is part of the revelation of God’s will. Ephesians conceives of these relations through the analogy of the household.

God is addressed as our Father in the opening verses of Ephesians, yet this “fatherhood” isn’t generic nor due to our being created by God (God as creator at this moment isn’t in view) Rather the Father is father due to the Father’s relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father (our Father) is father of the Lord Jesus Christ. it is through our relationship to Jesus Christ the Son, that God the Father is our father.

The relation that is “natural” in God, between Father and Son with the Holy Spirit is in terms of the Father’s relationship to humanity is God’s choice and desire for us. This is God’s will that we are joined with the Son and thus are, by the Father’s choice, adopted Sons. Sons here means both those united with and in Jesus Christ, and heirs of the household of God. We as adopted have an inheritance through the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee of this relationship we have in and through the Son, Jesus Christ.

We may find this masculine language troubling. We may find ourselves reifying the masculinity of this language and even attributing such reification to the author of Ephesians. Yet , “Paul” makes use of the household, which in the culture of the time, was always a household of a father whose heir would be the son of the father. However, we should see (and I think are intended to see) that this household and paternity of God are strange and peculiar.

The peculiarity is that we don’t have only one son. Adoption for the sake of gaining an heir would have been somewhat commonplace for the time and culture, but the Father’s household doesn’t have only one heir. All in the household are heirs, sons. We are brought into this peculiar household of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit as sons, being joined to and with the Son. We are guaranteed this position as sons through and in the Holy Spirit, which seals the inheritance and is through whom we have as the guarantee that we are heirs who will inherit.

But this peculiarity doesn’t end in this multiplicity of heirs and sons (whether male or female, Jew or Greek, bond or free, to remember for a moment Galatians). It continues as it up ends ‘natural” process of inheritance. IN the household of God the Father, inheritance comes through the actions of a living father, not a dead father. And also the adoption comes through the Son (anticipating what is about to be said later on in Ephesians), specifically through the death of the Son and his coming to life again. It is the passion of Christ is the means of our adoption as sons.

We are brought into the Household of God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, by God’s willing our identification with Christ which is our adoption as Sons through receiving the Holy Spirit who seals us as wills, and is who is given to us as the guarantee of our inheritance as adopted sons. This all may seem to masculine, do women become men in this view? (some in the history of Christianity have come to this conclusion?) We shouldn’t cling to tightly to this identity as sons, for we will find that gender and roles that are played can be a bit fluid in this household.

For the moment, we should see here that the Household of God is about an economy of relationships, that in part can be spoken of in terms of the Relationship of God the Father with God the Son, and we speak of God as our Father because through the Holy Spirit we are joined to Jesus Christ the Son and in that union with Christ we are adopted and made sons, that is heirs. Yet we inherit, not through the death of the Father but but the Fathers being ever living and our life. And even more peculiar our adoption is made possible by the death and subsequent exaltation of the Son. Oddly enough in the household of God we inherit only through the ongoing life of the Father, yet we are adopted as sons through the death of the Son.

The plan or economy of the household of God, is a peculiar economy, and it is the economy of a relation that is God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, into which we are joined through faith in Jesus Christ. As we follow “Paul’s” reflection on this household, the peculiarity and strangeness of this economy (plan) and relationship will only grow and multiply.

Transmission of the Tradition and incorporating new groups and peoples into the Body of Christ is a complex process. The second chapter of Ephesians uses a number of mixed metaphors in giving an account of this process, which is ultimately bringing together Jew and Gentile as the church, a living temple. This process builds a temple of those who weren’t citizens of Israel with those who are citizens. This building is founded upon the apostles and prophets, but the building is ongoing as the Temple/people of God grows (an organic living building), through the continual addition of peoples. What Ephesians doesn’t have in view is how human participation might facilitate or muck up this process. Raymond Aldred’s presentation for NPTS Symposium 2015, Race and Racism, on indigenous reimagining of repentance and conversion, in part demonstrates how the process described in Ephesians was distorted for indigenous peoples. Aldred’s reimagining I suggest offers a way for the indigenous and any group oppressed by White distortions of the Tradition, embrace the reality of God building the church by incorporating new people into Israel, the Church the Body of Christ.

Aldred’s paper didn’t have in view the ecclesiology of Ephesians, but was attempting an account of repentance, which values indigenous spirituality and experience as able to provide a deepening of Christian theological concepts. Through valuing of indigenous spirituality and experience and reimagining repentance Aldred liberates the concept from White distortions of repentance and conversion. However given the oppressive distortion of the concepts of conversion and repentance by white Europeans, I suggest that Aldred’s project is made possible through the divine act of building the Church throughout time and with all peoples as describe in Ephesians.

Aldred offered a reinterpretation and reimagining of repentance for indigenous, specifically Cree, Canadians. He reinterprets repentance as a decision to turn and embrace the life Creator has provided, have sorrow for a lost identify rejecting the shame put upon indigenous people, and taking responsibility to work towards healing all relationships. He argues that this reinterpretation fits with traditional and Biblical definitions of repentance that can be summarized as a contrite turning from, sin essential for conversion, and for living out of the day to day Christian life.

A substantial portion of Aldred’s paper gives the historical (some very recent) reasons why this reinterpretation is necessary. When the Newcomers came, these Europeans presented to the indigenous populations an equation of Whiteness and Christianity. The Newcomers teaching on repentance and conversion was to teach an absolute rejection of indigenous culture based upon the absolute identification of European and Christian. To my ears Aldred’s indigenous reimagining seems more a retrieval of the true meaning of repentance and conversion and a rejection of the heretical idea that Europeans were the Church, the people of God. His approach to retrieving repentance for both First Nations and Newcomers, suggests a method for a retrieval of the Tradition after White ideological distortion of the tradition.

Aldred’s “method” in the paper could be stated this way (though he doesn’t so summarize nor even acknowledge a method): Identify what is the Tradition of the Church that was received by the Europeans, Identify the distortion(s) of that Tradition by Whites in their encounter and oppression of those who aren’t white (in this instance the indigenous populations of North America) the reimagining of the traditional categories through retrieval of the Tradition which is also an enculturated expression, and thus rescues the Tradition from White oppressive distortion.

Ray Aldred’s approach suggests a need to reexamine how we conceive and talk about transmission of the Tradition of the Church through the age of European conquest and colonialism. We often speak of European interpretations of the Tradition as legitimate enculturation that becomes oppressive or illegitimate upon transmitting to other cultures and peoples the Tradition as enculturated by Europeans. However, what Aldred’s limited account shows is that the situation we find in European colonialism isn’t merely a failure to allow enculturation of the Tradition among those who aren’t European, but a distortion of the received Tradition by the ideology of White Supremacy.

What is this distortion? In the attempt to assimilate indigenous into Newcomer culture and society, Christianity was used to condemn indigenous culture and lift up Whiteness. Repentance and conversion is explicitly and at times intentionally distorted for both indigenous and Europeans, through the claim that repentance involves turning away from the entirety of indigenous culture and conversion then is seen as becoming European. As I’ve said being Christian and being White became synonymous.

How does this distortion happen? This is more than enculturation. This is an identification of the People of God with being European and White. This is a subtle but drastic move from enculturation to actual heresy, a misapplication of the understanding of The Church as the people of God and continuation of the Work of God begun with the people of Israel. To fully trace out this movement is, of course, beyond the scope of this post. However, prior to this distortion as new peoples were incorporated into the church and received the Tradition it was acknowledged that any people had witness of God in their own culture. While there were demonic elements in each culture (primarily identified with idols of the god’s of any particular people) as a people converted to Christ and were joined with the people of God the church, there was a process in which the witness of God to people was sought out in the culture. This process often was fraught with conflict, a well-known example of this is the bringing in the insights of Greek philosophy into the Church and Tradition, opposed by Tertullian by his famous phrase “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem.”

For the Church and the Tradition this process has a twofold necessity. First the Church and the Tradition it transmits is in continuity with the People of Israel. Paul speaks of this with the metaphor of cultivation in which a branches from one tree are grafted into another tree. Israel is the cultivated domestic olive tree, into which all other people are grafted into through faith in Christ. Second, while the Church is the continuation of the people of Israel as the people of God, the people of God are no longer a racial, or ethnic or national identity, but a coming together of all peoples through incorporation in Christ. In this view, no longer can any particular nation, people or race claim to have a special relationship to God based on such identity, only being in Christ makes us members of the Israel of God. This process was interrupted and distorted by an identification of White and European with being the people of God, the new Israel.

By this misappropriation for themselves of the designation of the New Israel to a particular people, the White race, Europeans, no longer could transmit the Tradition, nor be agents of incorporation into the body of Christ. Thus, reinterpretation, reimagining and retrieval along the lines of Aldred’s reimagining of repentance for indigenous and newcomers in Canada is need across the board if we are to regain some semblance of church and Tradition as Whites. In part this means accepting that God has been at work, in spite of heresy incorporating peoples into Christ, and aspects of the Tradition have been received even when there is such distortion and great heresy.

This is an interlude in the series of blog posts on Ecclesiology and human sexuality begun here.

Peter J Leithart recent essay at First ThingsSex and Tradition, illustrates my frustration with much conservative thought on sex, sexuality and the family: it clings tenaciously to Aristotelian/Thomistic metaphysics to critique modern and contemporary metaphysics and does so in defense of monogamy and family. My difficulty has several facets. First before St Thomas Aquinas achieved his synthesis of Aristotle and the Tradition of the Church, Aristotle wasn’t seen as an obvious friend of the Tradition. Second there is the assumption that merely because there are current philosophies and understandings of science that challenge the Tradition, there is no possibility of dialog or analogous Thomistic synthesis between the Tradition and current knowledge and theory. Third, is that there is the consistent failure to reflect on that in the Church’s history celibacy/virginity was the preferred state and not marriage and biological family.

The Church didn’t reject marriage, family, and sex, but in my reading of the Tradition it doesn’t seem to be as enamored of marriage and family as Modern and contemporary conservative expressions of the tradition are.

In regard to the church and its tradition. Leithart’s conclusion that family is the space that Tradition happens is an odd claim if one looks at the history of the Church. First, if we take up Irenaeus of Lyon, the place of tradition is the gathered people of God around a bishop, family isn’t in view at all. While people with families are certainly participants in this process of passing on the Tradition but it is the Bishop that is the locus of tradition. Also, the monastic tradition of the church has been transmitted for centuries by celibates, without the aid of family or procreation. Generally it was familial relations that have often threatened the transmission of the tradition when dioceses and monastic foundations became part of familial inheritance. If we look at the history of the church monogamous marriage and the biological family wasn’t seen as the locus or seen as necessary for the transmission of the Tradition of the Church and its faith.

This isn’t meant to deny that family can be a place of receiving from the past and even of receiving the faith and the Tradition of the Church. I’m deeply grateful for my family and its long history of faith, and many of my friends have also so received the Tradition as passed through their family. However, I would argue that my family was able to pass on the faith to me because it didn’t consider itself to be the locus of tradition and the faith, but rather regarded the people of God, the Church, as that space where I could receive the faith. My family gave up its primacy in my life and brought me to the gathered people of God, the Church and its sacraments. At a month old, I was Baptized and joined with people to whom I wasn’t related, and even those to whom I was related in the gathered people of God I first knew them as members of the church and only later in life realized that they were also my second and third cousins. First, and foremost we were in Christ, members of the household of God, secondarily we were biological family. For the church, it isn’t biological and familial inheritance that is the locus of the tradition, rather family can become a means for passing on the faith when it brings itself and its children to the people of God as the locus of belonging and reception of the Tradition not based on familial ties and biological descent and inheritance but new birth, which is from God and not human will.

One doesn’t need to have children within a monogamous marriage to understand or have tradition, and certainly the Tradition of the Church is not localized in the biological family unit. When the biological family dies to itself and makes its union with Christ its primary identity then family is taken up into Christ and can join in being the locus of the transmission of the faith, but it is so because it relativizes biological birth by the spiritual birth of Baptism. The people of God, created by God’s will and not procreation, is the only locus of the Tradition of the Church.

The opening session of the Symposium for the Theological Interpretation of Scripture, Race and Racism Dr. Love L. Sechrest of Fuller Theological Seminary presented the paper “Enemies, Romans, Pigs, and, Dogs: Loving the Other in the Gospel of Matthew”. The paper is synthetic drawing together critical race theory “research into the identity and ways of being allies for racial justice” and the Gospel of Matthew’s presentation of enemies and enemy love. The paper also draws Whites, Blacks and People of Color into a place of meeting around the challenge of enemy love by simultaneously problematising enemy love (or simplistic and mono-logical applications of this clear Gospel mandate) and upholding it by allowing for differing interpretations and applications of what this call to love our enemies means. This last bit came out more in the discussion of the paper than in the presentation of the paper itself. In this session both Sechrest’s presentation, in the response by Rev. Rebecca Gonzales,of the Evangelical Covenant Church, and in the discussion we were invited into a communal space where the tensions and the ambiguities of race, racism, and our attempts to overcome racism could come in contact with the Gospel and the tensions and ambiguities we find in the Gospels themselves, in particular the Gospel of Matthew.

In response to this I feel the need to come out with a confession I’ve been working up to publishing here at Priestly Goth. I confess my own failure to see the impact and extent of racism as it affects Christianity and Christian institutions. When in 2004, I, an American Baptist, and, soon to be Episcopal Priest began an ecumenical church plant Church of Jesus Christ Reconciler, we were troubled by the Whiteness of our endeavor. I argued that the racial segregation of Christians and the denominational divisions were separate issues, saying that the division of Christians among denominations had to be dealt with first. I don’t remember how strenuously I had to argue this, but I don’t recall much if any resistance to this idea. We ultimately consoled ourselves that a ministry and church planting vision couldn’t deal with every issue. We were focused on Ecumenism and seeking to heal and move beyond denominational division and separation.

I now look back on that and wonder at how I didn’t see racial segregation as the more basic division. More to the point, I wonder at how I didn’t see the racial segregation in Christian institutions in the United States as a sign of a deep ecclesiological heresy. Though, I know how I couldn’t see it , because I saw racism in Christianity and the Church and racial segregation in congregational and institutional life as something imposed from outside American Christians institutions, rather than as the consequence of an internal distortion of the Gospel and of White Christian ecclesiology. I failed to see how race and racism was a creation of Europeans as White with Blacks at the bottom of a moral and ontological hierachy with other people of color in a spectrum in between. This system was invented to justify enslavement of Africans. The backing up of this claim I will not go into at the moment, but will only reference James Cone and Willie Jennings (and others).

I confess that in my ministry I put off racism in Christian institutions as secondary, or as something that was merely an external impulse and not of primary concern of the Gospel or of what it means to be church. This was a blindness. I can account for this blindness but that doesn’t excuse a refusal to address the racist conditions that persist in our Christian institutions, the symptom of which is our continued segregation.

I was encouraged by Sechrest own admission of the difficulty in facing and working towards ending this situation. She said multiple times as she addressed questions about dealing with this, that the questions were important but that she didn’t have clear or easy answers.

I have some thoughts of a way I think Whites should approach answering the questions that arise as we face the depth of the failure with which the segregation in our Christian institutions and congregation presents us. To begin answering this I will speak first from a theological perspective: I believe it in part is to recognize that the segregation represents for Whites an acceptance and perpetuation of an ecclesiological heresy, and as such we need to confess that Whites are the ones who separated from Blacks and people of color. In our speech and attitudes we need to stop perpetuating the narrative of the black Churches “leaving” and separating from White Churches. It was Christian Whites who divided themselves off from other humans and Christians, not the other way around.

(Edited, 9/30/2015, primarily for grammar and clarity, content is unchanged)

Rowan Williams, in his essay The Body’s Grace, proposes a way forward in thinking about human sexuality that can both hold to the Tradition of the Church and at the same time be open to and affirming of the diversity of human sexuality and gender expression and identity. As I read The Body’s Grace, Williams sees desire and human sexual intimacy as rooted in God’s own desire: “ God’s desire for God” and God’s desire for humanity and creation. Our sexulaity and our sexual intimacy , or how we view and conduct ourselves as sexual embodied beings, is key to our spiritual development as persons (It is important to note here that celibacy is seen by Williams as a way of being sexual and having sexual intimacy, thus we don’t need to be “sexualy active” to be fully living into our sexual embodiedness.) What I take away from The Body’s Grace (and this doesn’t exhaust the essay) is that human sexuality and gender expression and identity are bound up in God as Trinity, the Incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, and the actuality of the Ecclesia.

In the connection of sexuality to ecclesiology (God’s desire for and being espoused to God’s people) Williams and Traditionalists are making a similar point. In my own theological reflections on human sexuality and gender identity and inclusion of LGBTQ I’ve generally avoided thinking along the lines of ecclesiology and Trinitarian theology as being directly related to sexuality. It dawned on me as I read Williams that part of the objection of Traditionalists is their sense that the views of acceptance of LGBTQ abandon the ecclesiological and trinitarian dimensions that can be found in the traditionalist position on marriage. Another way to say this is that traditionalists often react to a denial that who God is and has revealed God’s self to be has consequences for the meaning of our sexuality and gender. Further more ,traditionalists also are concerned that we who seek to be open to and affirming of LGBTQ tend to shy away from Trinitarian language (and the specific Name, Father Son and Holy Spirit) and high Christology.

Thus the downside of The Body’s Grace is that, although thinking in terms of Trinity, Christology and Ecclesiology, Williams avoids specifically trinitarian language and names. For instances he says “God’s desire for God” rather than the more directly trinitarian (and Johannine) “The Father’s desire for the Son.” While Williams is clearly aiming at many of the same things traditionalists are aiming at he consistently stops short of explicitly invoking the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the Incarnation. Though, it is clear to me that the essay is thoroughly grounded in the Trinity and high Christology and high ecclesiology. Or if the essay isn’t so grounded I find it to be quite solipsistic in its view of God and otherwise nonsensical.

However, whether or not I’ve correctly discerned Williams’ intent, through The Body’s Grace I came to see Trinitarian theology, Christology and ecclesiology as rich soil in which to be open to and affirm a diversity of human sexuality and gender expression. So, I’m seeking to set out from The Body’s Grace taking up this traditional language and ecclesial way of speaking about our human sexuality, beginning with the marriage of a man to a woman and its use as imaging God’s desire for God’s people and humanity, and move that into a broader understanding of the diversity of human sexuality.

Some might object that doing so is too risky. The risk is that taking this all very seriously will simply reinscribe the same patriarchal and heterosexist place in which we’ve already found ourselves. For others the risk may be in bringing current conceptions of human sexulaity and gender into these orthodox spaces I will have already begun down a path that has departed from the Faith. I do not deny these risks. However, in embarking on this risky endeavor I’m enacting another aspect of The Body’s Grace, the riskiness of sexual intimacy and true human and divine encounter. If one believes God is Trinity, Father Son and Holy Spirit, that Jesus of Nazareth is the incarnation of the Son, The Word of God and that the Church is the locus (though not the full extent ) of God’s liberating transforming work then this must be risked. And I do trust in and rest in all of the above. After reading The Body’s Grace I feel I can’t but risk this path.

I will begin with a reading of Ephesians along these lines. In doing so I will be looking squarely into (without discarding) “…and God created them male and female…” as well as the gendered and heterosexual images of God’s desire for God’s people. However, I suggest our starting point be in this regard Paul’s understanding of the mystery of “ …And for this reason a man shall leave his mother and father and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” What is this mystery why is the marriage of a man and a woman as sacrament? The mystery isn’t’ the union of the two people rather the mystery is what is revealed of Christ and the Church. But do note that I’m saying this is the beginning. This is risky and difficult because traditionalists assert it is the beginning, the ending, and the whole story. I wish to take Paul on his own terms and accept that as revelation and let this trust guide the exploration. This beginning point is to say our sexuality, and sexual and gender identity is an ecclesiological question and thus it is also a christological and Trinitarian question. So beginning here while accepting the diversity of sexuality and gender identity and expressed as part of our humanity, is then to approach that diversity formed by Orthodox affirmations of God as Father Son and Holy Spirit and of Jesus of Nazareth as the incarnation of the Son. If you choose to follow this thread this will be a focus for the coming months in Ecclesial Longings.

I hope you my readers will engage this journey. I do not have the end already sketched out, . You who read this are seeing this exploration in process. At the beginning of this risky endeavor I have some questions for you my reader:

What frightens you about this exploration? What in this exploration is risky for you?

What in the above sketch of our journey excites you or pulls at your heart?Do you have suggestions of books and authors I should be reading and consulting? Who should be our companions on this way? I’m especially looking for voices that may be from the margins as well as mainstream voices. Also, are there commentators on the book of Ephesians that I should be consulting as I take us on this journey?

Today we celebrate the feast of the Ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, into heaven. As this feast is on a Thursday, it is at times transferred to the 7th Sunday of Easter or passed over altogether. This feast may also seem superfluous, or merely a marking of one last event in the Gospel of Luke and in the Acts of the Apostles. Many of us pass this feast by and don’t give it much thought, I know I did this for much of my Christian life even after seminary.

Part of a reason to pass it over is that given our current cosmology it seems a little embarrassing. Space is up not heaven. The spatial ascension, which would have confirmed some ancient (not all mind you) cosmologies, and would be all this was about if all we have on this day is a description of Christ going from earth to heaven. The crude (and false) interpretation of this feast is that we celebrate how Jesus got back to heaven. This isn’t what this is all about as a careful reading of say the Gospel of John shows. Jesus Christ wasn’t walking around for 40 days waiting to return to heaven, he was already there.

Then what is this all about? If Jesus Christ didn’t need the conveyance of clouds and slowly lifting up into the air to get to heaven then what is this spectacle all about? Well first we should recognize that yes this is spectacle! None of the descriptions of Jesus’ ascension are necessary, rather they are all symbolic, visual cues and clues to the meaning of the incarnation, Christ’s death and Resurrection. Without this symbol of ascension and its spectacle, that transfixed the Apostles and disciples gaze, we miss a very important point, if Jesus just one day disappeared in a poof, like his appearances to the disciples or his disappearance with the two disciples in Emmaus, then we loose an important assertion about Jesus’ and thus God’s physicality after the incarnation.

The physicality of the spectacle is important. Jesus of Nazareth is a real and physical human being. Granted something extraordinary is happening with this physical body of the Christ, but after the Resurrection Jesus’ body does strange things and has strange properties (walks through doors and walls, has wounds that can still be touched but aren’t’ a problem for the body) but it is still physical Jesus eats food, touches people, breaks bread. The spectacle of the ascension tells us that Jesus Christ as a body is in heaven with God. To go up, is symbolic, one ascends to a throne, heaven is the throne of God. Up represents transcendence, divinity as beyond the physical plane. Yet in this beyond there is now and forever a physical body.

In short: the Ascension of Christ through spectacle and symbol tell us that the incarnation is a permanent reality. God in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, is permanently human, with the wounds of the Cross, and forever united with creation and the physical universe. God and matter are forever united. This is the ultimate meaning of the Gospel, and our salvation, it is the means by which all is made whole and the world is transformed. Now, forever, God is part of creation and the universe, in and through the body Jesus of Nazareth. We can be united with God because God has united God’s self to us in our humanity and in our physicality.

This is the third post in what seems to be the beginning of series of posts on Liturgy and Worship. The first in this series can be found here, the second is mentioned in the first paragraph below. LEK 3/13/05.

In this clearing I see The Liturgists as taking pieces from various sources within Christianity and offering up a blended and recombined liturgies to be used in worship or meditation, as may strike one(this description is in part taken from Facebook exchange with Mike McHargue). The liturgist are offering up a meal or a smoothie: One could enjoy it on the go, or sitting down with friends. One may cook something up yourself using the same ingredients and following their recipe. Kline’s approach in the John the Revelator Mass is more holistic, in terms of the liturgical tradition, he takes up the Mass as a whole. ( granted the reason for this is he was commissioned to write a setting of the Mass) Kline takes the Mass as a place to set camp. He then invites disparate elements often totally unrelated to the tradition of the Mass into the encampment, and invites us to live there, or at least allow ourselves to be guests inhabiting the liturgical tradition of the mass for at least a time.

Both are forms of hospitality and gift. But very different. Kline offers up a hospitality of space and clearing, invites us, and the disparate elements of music, his own composition style, poetry and folk hymns into the space of a tradition. The Liturgists want to feed you, give you the various flavor of things they’ve tasted on their travels, they’ll mix it up for you, cook it up, and/or give you the recipe for you to cook up your own liturgical meal or smoothie. You don’t have to stop and live in their space, Just come in pick up the smoothie – enjoy and be fed and then be on your way.

In the John the Revelator mass the liturgical tradition is the space into which disparate elements are gathered into a whole and are transformed into something else as they are brought together in the house of the Mass. For the Liturgists and their liturgies it is the tradition that is transformed as they mix blend and recombine various elements to offer up something to the passer by, content that people are nourished by the flavors and the sustenance found in various fruit and vegetable they’ve picked from the gardens and habitations of other Christians.

Kline’s Mass affirms that to inhabit the Tradition is a potentially a deeply creative space. There’s a lot of room to be in this space even as that space will, if you live there, form one into something else, rather than one transforming pieces into something else to live in one’s own encampment.